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  Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

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  Comes in a full colour CD wallet with 4 page booklet.
  Cover artwork by The Red Dress: www.debutart.com/illustration/the-red-dress#/illustration
  
  Release 14/01/2013
  
  Wedding is the electrifying debut release from British-Afro-pop-band A.J. Holmes and The Hackney Empire.
  
  Fusing afro-pop, soukous and calpyso influences with classic London narratives in the vein of Ian Dury and Squeeze, AJ Holmes and The Hackney Empire have created a feel-good soundtrack for 21st century tropical pearly kngs and queens.
  
  Special guests on 'Wedding' include London based Nigerian Afro-grime star Afrikan Boy who features on 'Your Latest Status Up Date', Papa Milo - the guitarist from the Palm Wine Legend S.E. Rogie's band: The Morning Stars - who comes onboard the cover of his bands song 'Do Me Justice'; Kastro, the Congolese MC who features on Fraudian Slip and the celebrated Sierra Leonean musician Folo Graff, who joins the group for the Story Of The New Electric Hi-Life.
   
  Influenced by London's rich cultural melting pot 'Wedding' is a union of cultures; where Africa meets London and falls in love! Wedding (pronounced Vedding) is also a district of Berlin where A.J. met Les Beaux Gosses de Berlin who taught him to play Soukous, hot housed him in the Congolese community and fed him with their beautiful musical history (which served as inspiration for most of the songs on the album).
  
  Wedding embodies the mad professor genius of AJ Holmes, who fuses wildly different genres of music together with such a deft hand that you'd think they had always walked hand in hand. Take, for example, the Pan African guitar styles that are woven together with English lyrical wit and satirical observations that can only come from a man born and bred in deepest Barking & Dagenham. AJ's partners in crime (Abi, Ged, Martyn and Sabine) are the eponymous 'The Hackney Empire'; a multi-cutural tribe of über-talented musicians who bring even more colour to a fluorescently bright palette of sounds.
  
  Mastered by the same people behind Paul Simon's Graceland, DJ's have been scrambling to offer up remixes of Wedding, check out the ones we have for you here by João Brasil, who took a break from his official remixes of CSS, Bonde do Rolê, and N.A.S.A to take on 'Do me Justice'; Konrad Old Money, fresh from his collaboration with The Creators Project takes on The Story Of The New Electric Hi-Life, and extra-hot London based South African/British producer/DJ Moroka (The Very Best co producer) who takes a spin on 'I'll Never Forget You'
  
  Stream Wedding remixes:
  soundcloud.com/ajholmesthehackneyempire/sets/wedding-remixed/
   
  Wedding is the debut album for AJ Holmes and the Hackney Empire, but word has already been spreading like wildfire. Having pricked the ears of white-hot electro producer duo Radioclit (M.I.A, The Very Best, Amadou & Mariam) to become their resident house band at their Secousse club, they released their debut single 'Fraudian Slip' in 2011, (also produced by Radioclit) to critical acclaim. Even Billy Bragg wants to join the melee; keep an eye out for his cameo in their new video  A13 Trunk Road To The Sea: 
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdXsm81FkBo&feature=youtu.be
  
  Includes unlimited streaming of Wedding (Me Ware Wo) - album via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. ... more

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